Good conversations are taking place around reducing bias and increasing diversity in tech hires.

But real change happens when infrastructure is implemented and executed within an organization.

Our guest, Everett Harper, is an experienced Infrastructuralist, and has the studies and results to show how tech companies can positively change hiring practices.

Everett is co-founder of Truss where, for 10 years, they’ve been helping startups scale and large enterprises and public agencies transform from legacy to modern systems.

Truss made its name by helping to save Healthcare.gov, and since then they’ve worked with massive health data systems, major transportation and logistics systems, and several companies with data science specializations.

Everett's expertise is in customer development, a technique that combines customer behavior with ethnography to inform product and business development.

He has an MBA and M.Ed in design and technology from Stanford, and a BSEE in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering from Duke. Everett was a full-tuition AB Duke Scholar and won the NCAA National Championship in soccer, the first in any sport for Duke.

To learn more about Truss, please visit their website here: https://truss.works/

Follow Truss on social media here:
https://twitter.com/truss_works
https://www.facebook.com/trussworks/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/trussworks

Connect with Everett and follow him everywhere he glows here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/everettharper/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/everettharper
IG: https://www.instagram.com/everettharper/?hl=en

00:00 - Meet Everett Harper!
07:45 - Everett's origin story
12:05 - the fails and learnings from Everett's first entrepreneurial adventure
15:00 - Linden Lab https://www.lindenlab.com/
18:00 - diving deep into customer development in 2011 during his time with Women's Lab 2.0 - now called W2.0 - https://women2.com - Everett creates a calendar app
21:00 - how to inspire potential team members to join your startup
26:00 - bootstrapping a startup through customer acquisition
30:00 - how to make diversity and inclusion central to a startup's hiring practice from day one and tie it into the business model
34:00 - how founders can build their network to include diversity
37:48 - how to make sure female engineers feel psychologically safe in the workplace
40:04 - what Truss learned from their first Transgender hire to make sure everyone feels welcome and included
42:25 - what is ethnography and how you can use it to deepen your customer development
45:24 - Everett's thoughtful insights advice for female founders confronted with misogynistic Bro Cultures in the startup community as well as at the office.
59:45 - Everett's brilliant founder journey advice: get comfortable with being uncomfortable - Stitch That On A Pillow!

Thank you for carving out time to improve your Founder Game - when you do better, your business will do better - cheers!

Ande ♥
Ande Lyons
http://andelyons.com


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